HEVA members document Old Georgetown Cemetery with geophysics and 3D scanning
HEVA members Samuel Koontz, Marcus Rodriguez, and James Keppeler took part in a Wenner-Gren–funded survey of Old Georgetown Cemetery in Scott County, pairing subsurface geophysics with digital documentation of surviving headstones.
In May 2023, HEVA members contributed to fieldwork at Old Georgetown Cemetery in Scott County, Kentucky, as part of “Documenting Historic African American Cemeteries with New Heritage Sciences Methods” — a project led by Dr. Elena Sesma, then of the UK Department of Anthropology, with Dr. George Crothers as co-investigator, supported by a Wenner-Gren Foundation Post-PhD Research Grant awarded in April 2022.
Samuel Koontz and Marcus Rodriguez operated ground-penetrating radar and magnetometry alongside Crothers and Sesma, while James Keppeler carried out 3D scanning of headstones. Aerial documentation added orthomosaic photography, LiDAR, and spectral imagery, and limited shovel testing was used to ground-truth selected geophysical anomalies.
At Georgetown, individual headstones were mapped, photographed, and digitally scanned to build what the project describes as a “comprehensive grave inventory” supporting genealogical and historical research — a record community members can continue to expand as the cemetery is rehabilitated. The burial ground, historically known as the “Old Colored Cemetery,” holds the graves of United States Colored Troops and Buffalo Soldiers, many of them no longer marked. The work was carried out in collaboration with the Scott County African American Heritage Association.
